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Tuesday 26 April 2011

My bee hive update...


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Hi all, just popped in to give you a quick update on my solitary beehive that i've mentioned here before. As you may well remember, i bought the above hive and waited patiently for it's first residents....it didn't take long before i had some interest...
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This was last year, the idea is that they make individual nests in there for thier eggs. So for the past few months they've been busy coming to and fro, and this is what they've produced....
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How cool is that?.
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Each hole is full of this packaging....it is tiny bits of leaf that have been bitten off by the bee, then stuffed into the hole, then they have made little tube type things for thier eggs to go in. So what you are seeing here is about 5 bee eggs in each hole, each one carefully wrapped in leaf and pollen. Then the bee stuffs the end with leaves to keep it well protected..
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My kids were fascinated by this, as was i too. This is what i liked about this kind of solitary hive, you can take the sections off to learn about how the bees store thier eggs. So eventualy these eggs will hatch and the new bees will emerge and the cycle will start again.
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You can make these yourself, or just drill loads of holes in a log like i've just done today, it's just somewhere nice for the bees to find shelter for thier young. If the worlds bee population dissapeared we'd be in serious trouble...so i reckon this is a worthy project for the kids to folow in the garden.
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See ya soon. :)